The focus on semiautomatic rifles is a little misguided or perhaps sentimental. Handguns are the more usual weapon in murders.

It is only natural to be moved by 20 little children being murdered in a school, but there are 30,000 gun deaths per year in the US, which is 84 per day. (Only 12,000 gun murders per year, though, which is only 32 per day.)

So 20 children more or less is a statistical round-off error.

Here is an interesting piece in the Wash. Post from Nov 2010, in which the reporters meticulously traced the weapons used in killings of police officers.

By the way, this information, which is of course crucial for making any informed statement about keeping guns out of the hands of the people who should not have guns, was made very hard to obtain by an act of Congress, the Tiahrt amendment, in 2003.

I’d do a disservice to attempt to summarize the articles, but I just mention that about 1/3 of the guns used to kill police officers were stolen or borrowed, mostly stolen, from legal owners. From the anecdotes in the article, these were guns which were not secured in gun safes.

Another interesting data point: 1/6 of the guns used to kill police officers were police guns.

I don'’t know much, but I am thinking about this and trying to learn something

You ask, Keith, why focus on guns, as guns are only a means, and there will be murders with or without guns. True enough.
On the other hand, it is possible that some murders are preventable, and that if we understood how and by what means and under what circumstances they occur, we might succeed in preventing some that are preventable, even if others are not preventable. By the way, I don’t really regard the murder of 20 little children as a round–off error.

There are murders in which the choice or availability of weapons is not important; a kitchen knife can substitute for a gun in a domestic fight. But there are murders in which simply would not happen without a gun. A scenario described in the Wa. Post article that I cited is that a police officer make a routine traffic stop, and the driver shoots the officer. It just doesn’t happen that the driver leaps out of the car and kills the officer with a kitchen knife.

I find it striking that 1/3 of the guns used to kill police officers (in the Wa. Post study) were stolen or borrowed from legal owners. I feel pretty certain that they were not stolen by guys with acetylene torches cutting open gun safes, but from solid citizens who leave guns in closets in shoe boxes.

You and I both drive, and therefore you have a legitimate interest that I am licensed to drive, that I keep my car in good condition, and that I don’t drive drunk. You also have a legitimate interest that I don’t leave a gun in a shoe box for someone to steal and then to use to kill a police officer during a routine traffic stop.

Just a quick note to thank you, Keith, for the interesting references. Although it is interesting to discuss things with thoughtful people who don’t necessarily share my preconceptions, I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this. Otherwise, I would soon feel the need to read a few hundred years worth of political philosophy and history, not to mention to study statistics so I can properly evaluate the literature on guns and public safety.

I have not carefully read either of the papers you recommended but have taken a quick look.

I rather expected to find on Prof. Rummel’s site a defense of the thesis that an armed populace is the best guarantor of political liberty. Instead, at least in my quick look at the site, I found the hypothesis, which I share, that the best defense of a civil society is a civil society.

Suppose we agree that Prof. Mauser’s hypothesis is correct that increasing the number of responsible citizens carrying concealed handguns actually would increase public safety. You (meaning the society in general, meaning the government representing society in general) would still have a legitimate interest in the sort of weapons that I possess and the manner in which I keep them.

Let’s say that I regard myself as a defender of liberty and that I judge the US government to be a tyranny, and that I choose to prepare myself to defend against tyranny by acquiring shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles and lurking around commercial airports.
Note that I haven’t fired the missiles (yet); I just avail myself of my constitutional right to possess them and of my constitutional right to walk around the periphery of airports. Do I receive your blessing? If not, then you are going to have to be ready to draw some lines somewhere.

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Started in October of 2002, Alphecca is an occasional blog of OPINIONS by a libertarian, gay gun-nut living in Vermont. Book reviews, politics, gun stuff, other stuff; it’s all here. Your opinions about my opinions are welcome in the comments and as I always say, thank’s for stopping by.